Page:Two Sermons on the Duty and Joy of Frequent Public Worship.djvu/15

Rh change their opinions and ways of thinking, the moment they see that the Word of God teaches something different from what they have hitherto thought.

The subject to which I wish now to apply these remarks is, that of the duty and privilege of frequent public worship. In most of our Churches now we have frequent services, frequent opportunities of joining in the public worship of God. What is the view you take of these services? Do you yourselves value them? Would the Apostles and early Christians have valued them? And if so, why would they have done so? Let us now consider this question. Observe, it is not of private prayer that I am about to speak; but of prayer in the congregation, and in what our Lord calls "the House of Prayer."

It is certain that the Apostles and early Christians highly valued public and united prayers. Our Lord taught them so to do. For He said, as you remember, "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them." Why this "gathering together?" Would it not do as well to pray and meditate at home? No, our Lord does not say so. He distinctly attaches the blessing to the "gathering together."

Again, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Christians are warned, "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is." In order to understand the full force of this command, you should know that at the time, and in the country in which it was given, it was very dangerous for men to obey it. The Hebrew Christians, to whom this Epistle was addressed, were at that time undergoing terrible persecutions. They were marked men; hated by their countrymen, because they were Christians. So that when they assembled themselves together, it was sometimes at imminent peril of their lives. Accordingly we are told that they used often to meet before the break of day, and in dens and caves of the